A network printer has been known, which is linked to a network, such as a local area network (LAN) or the Internet, and can accept a print instruction from any terminal device such as a personal computer in the network.
FIG. 6 is a view showing each function of a conventional network printer and a conventional network terminal device.
A network printer 1 is linked to the Internet 2, and can accept a print instruction from a network terminal device 3 also linked to the Internet 2.
The network printer 1 includes a PDL (Printer Description Language) decoding unit 11 for decoding PDLs according to the unique specifications of the respective printer manufacturers, and a printer engine 13 for actually printing pages of the decoded PDL.
The network terminal device 3 includes: a communication unit 31 for converting internal signals of the terminal device into network-compatible signals and vice versa; a Web browser 32 for restoring a home page written in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language); a browser screen 33 for displaying the home page restored by the Web browser 32; a storage unit 34 for storing a PDF file in the home page displayed on the browser screen 33 when the PDF file is downloaded; a PDF reader 35 for decoding the PDF file and restoring the same to its original page contents; a PDF reader screen 36 for displaying the restored original page contents; and a printer driver 37 for converting the original page contents restored by the PDF reader 35 into PDL.
A home page site 4 managing a home page has home page data 5 written in HTML, and a network address or URL of a PDF file 51 is stored in the home page data 5.
According to the combination of the conventional network printer 1 and network terminal device 3 shown in FIG. 6, for example, when the user of the network terminal device 3 wishes to print the PDF file 51 while viewing the home page 5, the user downloads the PDF file 51 to the PDF reader 35 directly or through the storage unit 34, converts the restored original page contents into PDL by the print driver 37, and then sends to the network printer 1 through the communication unit 31. The communication unit 31 and the network printer 1 are generally linked to each other through an intra-company network.
Thus, in order to print a PDF file while viewing a home page, processing to download the PDF file and restore its original page contents after activating the PDF reader 35, and processing to convert the restored page contents into PDL by means of the printer driver 37 are absolutely necessary. For this reason, it takes quite a long time to print a PDF file with the combination of the conventional network printer 1 and network terminal device 3.
In order to solve the above problem, for example, IBM Corporation has announced a network printer, Infoprint® 21, which can decode a PDF file and is provided with an internal Web server.
FIG. 7 is a view showing each function of a network printer with a PDF direct printing capability, which can decode a PDF file and is provided with an internal Web server, and of the conventional network terminal device.
A network printer 6 includes a PDF decoding unit 12 for decoding PDF, a printer engine 13 for actually printing pages of the decoded PDF, and a Web server 14 which can communicate with a home page site 4 through the Internet 2 and with a network terminal device 7 described below, and can output a home page of the network printer 6.
The network terminal device 7 includes a communication unit 31, a Web browser 32, a browser screen 33, and a storage unit 34 similar to those of the network terminal device 3, and additionally includes a second browser screen 38 for displaying the home page of the network printer 6.
The browser screen 38 is provided with a text box 39 where a PDF file to be printed by the network printer 6 is specified.
In the network terminal device 7, a network address or URL is extracted from the PDF file displayed on the browser screen 33 and transcribed to the text box 39 in the second browser screen 38, whereupon the network address is transmitted to the network printer 6, so that the network printer 6 downloads and prints the PDF file 51. Such a function to print a PDF file by downloading the PDF file based on the network address thereof at the network printer end is referred to as pull printing. The pull printing can omit jobs of the network terminal device 7 including the download of a PDF file and processing in the PDF reader 35 and printer driver 37. Hence, the functions of the network terminal device 7 occupied by a print job are reduced dramatically, thereby making it possible to improve work efficiency of the network terminal device 7.
Alternatively, the user may prefer to download a PDF file to the network terminal device 7 and then print the same by the network printer 6. In this case, the download of the PDF file is a must, but the processing in the PDF reader 35 and printer driver 37 can be omitted. As a result, the work efficiency of the network terminal device 7 can be improved as well.
However, in order to execute the pull printing, the user of the above-described conventional network terminal device 7 has to open the browser screen 33 and the second browser screen 38 on the Web browser 32, and transcribe the network address of the PDF file from the browser screen 33 to the text box 39 in the second browser screen 38. Hence, when there are many PDF files to be printed, the user has to repetitively specify the following PDF file by switching between the browser screen 33 and the second browser screen 38 and transcribe the network address of the specified PDF file, which makes an overall operation too complicated.